Same. We use the CAP books and my kids have all done well with them.

Everything You Need to Ace Chemistry in One Big Fat Notebook (The Complete High School Study Guide) is going to be our spine. This with Crash Course videos will give him more advanced concepts in brief and well explained lessons. Completing both of them will leave him with plenty of time for reading good books, and if they get too thick we'll work it out through discussion. No tests, no pressure. We already have Gray's Elements, the Itch trilogy, Radioactive Boy Scout, Cartoon Guide to Chemistry, Periodic Kingdom, and more I'm surely forgetting. From the adult/high school shelf I'm pulling Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements and The Poisoner's Handbook for him. I'm adding Why is Milk White, Radium Girls young reader, Dr Joe and What You Didn't Know, Caesar's Last Breath, and That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles to our library. Big brother says we really need to use periodicvideos.com with him, so he can learn to pronounce aluminium correctly. 😂 Disappearing Spoon also has a young reader version now. The regular one is in the history of science schedule we plan to use for his 8th grade, but I'm adding it for anyone else who may be interested.

That might just work with him. Cutting and pasting figures on a timeline is the extent of craftiness he will tolerate. 😄

We've been happy with the Audible versions, which also come with the full guidebooks. My youngest kids especially would rather listen than watch someone at a podium, and they can walk around doing mindless tasks like laundry while listening.

I asked the kids what worked well and what didn't. More of a rose and thorn for the year instead of their favorite subject. The dysgraphic kid said Megawords spelling. He still doesn't like spelling, but MW makes it seem like something he can actually learn. The highschooler said the Holt algebra textbook by Burger (the Thinkwell teacher) with nearly the same response. He still doesn't like math but that book teaches in a way he can succeed.

This website could help replace Material World. https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street

Build Your Library swapped those out of level 7 for some newer spines. We found The People and Places book to be fairly good, the Travel Book was just okay, and the Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth was rather meh. https://buildyourlibrary.com/purchase-level-7-curriculum/

SAME. 😂 Having made many a course from scratch I love paying for good schedules. 💸 OF does not have the worksheets and quizzes. Just the open ended journal that looks the same week after week. There are coloring pages now too, though my youngest wouldn't have used them if they were ready in his time. The daily schedule and weekly extras were fabulous though.

I used the Hakim history books with a couple of my graduates, with loads of conversation to balance it, but I chose not to use them with my younger kids. They used spines like An Indigenous People's History of the United States for Young People, A Different Mirror for Young People: A Multicultural History of the United States, etc instead. Here's a review of Hakim's First Americans volume, written by an Indigenous educator. https://nativecurriculumreview.blogspot.com/2020/06/curriculum-review-history-of-us-first.html?m=0

I found combining kids to be far more about their personalities and relationship than the curriculum, but I think it could definitely work for those kids. 🙂 Mine was an older 5th grader: his birthday is the state cutoff. He's a good reader but hates writing. I counted the journal and literature as part of his English.

I've used the 3-7 level with a 5th grader and have purchased volume two of the high school levels to use this fall. They're all secular now. The only religion would be the optional, free prayer journal that is not automatically included. The 3-7 one assumes you're reading along with them or reading it aloud and having constant conversations about the reading. Every scheduled day has selections from a nonfiction book and a literature book. A few places there are two readers, one for older kids and one for younger kids. You could make it lighter if needed by skipping some of the literature. My 5th grader read all of it, and sometimes the young reader too because it was such a good story. He's a strong reader and only knows lit based education. The high school versions have two tracks, one using many of the "young people" spines the 3-7 set does and the other one uses the adult/high school versions. The literature books are definitely more mature and they offer more titles than you could ever get through in a year, expecting you to pick and choose. The lit is not scheduled by pages and chapters, as high schoolers can learn to manage that themselves. (I'm probably going to write out daily page and chapter numbers for mine. He's perfectly capable but prefers me to do it.) Either way adding the Queer History of the United States for Young People or Queer History of the United States would be easy to work in. I'll add the latter for my rising 10th grader. OF has been the most inclusive US history I've found for middle grades and high school. It includes so many voices we never heard in other curricula. It's literature based and conversation heavy, which is perfect for us. My only real complaint is the scheduling of the 3-7, but it was easy to modify and no one can publish a schedule that works for every homeschooler. 😄 I loved that it's also one year, as I just can't see spending two whole years on it just to do one again in high school. My high schooler is only going to do volume 2, as he has far more interest in modern times and he's covered the early years well already. Of the others you've listed the only one that would be even close not being whitewashed is Blossom and Root. I've also heard good things about Curiosity Chronicles. Neither of these go very high in grade level yet if I recall correctly. They seemed too young for my youngest when he was there.

Maybe the "Horrible" lines? Horrible History, Horrible Science, Horrible Geography, Murderous Maths Eta: I reread and saw you wanted Magic School Bus level, not just above them like I first thought. These would be above them.

Golden Tales: Myths and Legends from Latin America The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas Anakú Iwachá: Yakama Legends and Stories Deer Dancer: Yaqui Legends of Life Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico These are more mythology than daily life, but sometimes that's all they had left after colonization. This one is more middle grades or younger, but written well enough a high schooler wouldn't find it babyish. Game of Silence by Erdrich You could also research whose ancestral land you live on and learn more about them. The nations often have great educational resources on their own websites. Eta: https://native-land.ca/

To answer the actual question a little better, I never stopped trying to meet him at his level. At that age he still would have been dragged to libraries and used book stores and I would have encouraged him to pick something. His choices were often nonfiction which was perfectly okay. He loved kiddie encyclopedias for various vehicles, I Spy books, or old school comics like Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. If I told everyone to go chill on their bed with books he might have read a favorite Calvin and Hobbes for the zillionth time. If I was shopping without him I'd keep an eye out for those types of books for him.

I raised one of those. 🙂 I kept assigning him high quality books to read and he quite dutifully worked through anything I assigned. Every once in awhile a series would grab him just right and he'd race through it, but it had to be just right for him to pick up a novel of any kind. I made sure to work through more actual literature curriculum with him, where I might have just had a heavy discussion based course with the heavier readers, to make sure I did actually cover the major bases. I didn't go light on him though. He worked through Homer, Austen, and Shakespeare just like the rest of them. Today he's a 19yo who considers himself a lover of good books and loves a rousing literary argument/conversation. He still very rarely picks up a book to read for fun. His first year of dual enrollment earned him an honor society membership and he was top of his class. 🤙 (Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings in 9th grade was hands down his favorite curriculum ever.)

Sounds like maybe Saxon isn't working as well as you'd like though? And if they're struggling to fill out drill pages they may not be physically ready for a textbook course. Maybe something like Singapore or Math in Focus would be from such a different angle that they'd be more engaged. These two have a really similar approach. Math in Focus has more baby steps built in where Singapore might expect you to make that leap on your own. They both have workbooks all the way. Horizons is a solid workbook course with a spiral method. It's from a religious publisher. My younger kids were nowhere near ready for textbook math courses at that age. They used the above and the stronger math student went to Beast Academy's online version.

Megawords. It's aimed at older learners and isn't the typical "memorize this list and test on Friday." My kid who was also confused and simply not getting it with R&S has done well here. It's leveled, not graded. I'd start with level 1 and go at the kid's speed.

That writing sample would be a good day for my 12yo. 🙂 He will not draw, color, etc at all, and will go to great lengths to avoid it entirely. In dance he has to work much harder at hands.

Dysgraphia may be something to watch for. He's ahead of where my dysgraphic kid was at 9, but obviously everyone is unique. 🙂 Mine struggled so much with cursive that we dropped it. It did not help his penmanship or reversals and just gave him even more details to try remembering. Beyond pencil to paper writing, other things to look at are poor spelling skills, mixing up words when writing/narrating, spacing while writing, fine motor skills like tying shoes, avoiding drawing/coloring or art in general, cutting shapes smoothly with scissors, gently handling very small objects, etc. My dysgraphic 12yo's current daily writing looks like one page in Megawords spelling workbook, math answers in a workbook (problems worked out as needed in a notebook that does not have neatness requirements), and either a grammar lesson *or* a writing lesson. We don't work on grammar and writing on the same days, and if a lesson is writing heavy I break them into him size daily bites.

The diy evolution and prehistory course has been my personal favorite this year. The kid and I have both found it fascinating. We've dragged the whole family into conversations. ❤️😄 My high schooler would probably say world mythology. They've read many fabulous stories and really, really enjoyed Professor Vandiver lectures.

Maybe take a break from history and do a world geography year instead? 🙂

The sweet spot for WWS level 1 in my house has been 7th, but surely some of them could have started in 6th. There was always some wailing and gnashing of teeth at the beginning, but once they found the rhythm and expectations of the curriculum we fell into a happy rut. 🙂 WWS is really good at what it does. I've used it with four kids now. I don't see it being a good fit for my dysgraphic kid at this point. He'll be 7th grade this fall and there's just no way. It would need modified so much it wouldn't be worth it.

Perhaps Winning With Writing from Jackris for that oldest one. It's open and go and not intensive for you or the kid. 6 Trait Writing from Evan Moor has been fabulous for my dysgraphic 12yo this year. It gets him working with and talking about various concepts easily, due to its gentle, unintimidating approach. If you just hand it to a neurotypical kid it's more of a supplement, but using the extra teaching and writing assignments that are only in the teacher pages can make it fuller. You mentioned something easier could get him writing more, which made me think of it.

It's a book book, and there's a movie now too. My older kids read this one in high school. The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women (Harrowing Historical Nonfiction Bestseller About a Courageous Fight for Justice) https://a.co/d/1KZxBPg I'd get the young reader version for my 12yo. The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark https://a.co/d/1UHudDU

I wouldn't do the first two levels with a kid that age. They'd feel babyish. Start at 3 or 4.